(We do not necessarily agree with everything
written in this article - Islamic Awareness)

The Issue of "Makkan Trade and the Rise
of Islam"

I. The Historiographic Challenge

1. The Methodological Confrontation

More than fifteen years have passed since Patricia Crone stunned the world
of orientalism by positing dramatically new hypotheses regarding the role of
Makkah in sixth to seventh-century A.D. trans-Arabian trade. Seeking to discern
the economic dynamic of the early Islamic state, her thesis contended that both
the composition and direction of Hijazi-Najdi trade in the era leading up to
the rise of Islam were not as they have been commonly portrayed. Her presentation
derived its strength from its sophisticated scientific analyses of the prevalence
of specific commodities, particularly "spices," in contemporary trade
flows. Its core analysis centered upon certain critical commonalities between
sixth to seventh-century Makkan imports and exports, and in its effort to make
trade patterns fit, even speculated that the Qurashis' primary base of commercial
operation was not where modern Makkah stands today. The essence of this theme
was compellingly argued in part 2 of her 1987 work, Meccan
Trade and the Rise of Islam, which she titled: "Arabia
Without Spices."

Crone's work has been aggressively attacked by various scholars in recent years
- an assault that has focused, in particular, upon her employment of what is
termed "negative evidence argumentation": to wit, the absence of source
references to trade implies the actual absence of trade. Such analytic techniques,
of course, are not uncommon in medieval historiography, nor are they unique
to Islamic scholarship. Six decades earlier, it will be recalled, it was a decline
in references to eighth-century trans-Mediterranean commerce, documented primarily
in Western ecclesiastical sources, that produced the Pirenne thesis positing
that an Islamic trade blockade had precipitated Western Europe's "Dark
Ages."

That the results are similar should come as no surprise. Both arguments have
failed to persuade because each confronts the complex challenge of seeking to
reconstruct the structure of any economy, medieval or modern, based on evaluating
a market-basket of commodities cited in export trade. The examples found are
often too sporadic to have serious economic consequences. Despite the fact that
some seventy-five percent of its governmental revenues are generated by oil
production, for example, modern Saudi Arabic typically generates less than three
percent of its gross domestic product formation from non-oil export earnings.
In both modern and medieval contexts, then, using select trade data as barometers
of economic dynamism does not invariably yield accurate results. In Crone's
case, they have produced quite controversial results. Indeed, seldom have hypotheses
predicated upon an absence of commercial evidence invoked such intense scholarly
scrutiny. R. B. Serjeant, in a 1990 article, for instance, describes her contentions
as:

calculated to attract publicity by shocking Islamists
through the strange theories that it advances on pre-Islamic Mecca, novel
theories to be sure, but founded upon misinterpretation, misunderstanding
of sources, even at times incorrect translations of Arabic.[1]

The acrimony has been longstanding. For while Crone and Serjeant have polarized
the Hijazi trade discussion, Watt, Wolf, Kister, Shaban, Simon, Peters, Donner,
and Ibrahim - and before them, Sprenger, Lammens, and sundry others - constructed
the basic intellectual infrastructure upon which it is built.[2]
Much of the controversy centers on the continuing debate over the general reliability
of the medieval Arabic sources as a foundation for sound economic analysis.
Such a dialogue does enjoy a certain logic, since the topic is historical and
original sources are a prime tool of the historian. The earliest classical sources
are vulnerable to criticism since, founded on oral traditions as captured by
often biased literary antiquarians, they are, by their very nature, anecdotal.
As such, they can be useful in illustrating certain incidents and trends, but
unless taken in aggregate, as a basis for serious commercial history, in a non-pejorative
sense, they are often little more than the early medieval equivalents of tabloid
journalism. This is not itself a formal criticism, but rather a characteristic
common to most chronicled medieval sources. While they can be useful in research,
they must be recognized for what they are and treated accordingly.

Both Crone and Serjeant concede the challenge of attempting to ascertain the
existence or non-existence of particular types of trade based on fragmentary
evidence.[3] While the former calls the early sources
"of questionable historical value," the latter describes them as "selective
and the data that they record so fragmentary that argument from negative evidence
has little value."[4] In the ongoing early Makkan
trade debate, both contentions probably are correct. The problem is threefold.
First, a prime reason that Crone and Serjeant struggle in their argumentation
is that they are trying to force early trans-peninsular Arab commerce into something
that it most likely was not: to wit, the overarching economic raison d'etre
of Makkah. Such an approach, however, is little more than the exercise of "recreating
the elephant by feeling the dimensions of its trunk." For an ever-present
danger of engaging in negative evidence argumentation using limited trade data
is that it can build toward conclusions that did not, in reality, obtain.

Second, they are arguing from the shaky foundations of modern historiographic
invention respecting sixth to seventh-century Hijazi transit trade. Crone and
Serjeant, as well as F. E. Peters, properly take issue with the conventional
notion that the longstanding commerce in spices and other luxury goods to the
Mediterranean basin during the early Christian centuries had continued to the
rise of Islam.[5] This was an interpretation pioneered
by Lammens, popularized by Watt and Wolf, and promoted, to a certain degree,
even by Donner. It has often been accompanied by a notion that the success of
contemporary Makkah as a trade emporium was highly instrumental, morally, economically,
and socially, in the rise of Islam. Watt asserts:

By the end of the 6th century A.D., they (Hijazi
traders) had gained control of most of the trade from Yemen to Syria - an
important route by which the West got Indian luxury goods as well as South
Arabian frankincense.

Commercial prosperity had let not merely to greater disparities
in wealth, but also to a partial breakdown in the system of clans and tribes
on which the security of Makkah depended.... It is against this social and
moral background that we must look at the religious beliefs current in Makkah
immediately before Muhammad's call.[6]

But even Watt, who has contributed two important works - Muhammad at Makkah and Muhammad at Medina - as
cornerstones for these socioeconomic contentions, devotes but two brief paragraphs
to the nature of this hypothesized trans-Hijazi luxury trade and just five others
to the underlying indigenous industrial base that would have made a more vibrant
Makkah-centric regional trade economically viable.[7]

Though this traditional notion, as noted, has been rejected by Crone, Serjeant,
and others - at times, even attributing the inherent misinterpretations to the
ambiguity of the medieval Arabic sources themselves - such exegesis is no more
than a "straw man" dialogue, as the sources never seriously claimed
a trade in oriental luxury commodities coincident with the rise of Muhammad.
Instead, they document a more voluminous trade in lower unit-value, indigenous
West Arabian products - animals, leather, foodstuffs, cloth, perfumes, and similar
consumer goods - a reality recognized by Sprenger, Kister, Simon, and Peters.[8]
Some of the regional import-export ventures in such commodities were, in reality,
quite large, with commercial caravans consisting of as many as 1,500, 2,000,
and even 2,500 transport camels at the dawn of Islam, as cited in the sources.[9]

There are passim references to a sixth and seventh-century trade in
luxury goods in the sources, to be sure. Ibn Sa`d indicates that early in his
career, the Prophet Muhammad owned silk garments that he subsequently abandoned
as ostentatious.[10] Ibn Habib relates that the would-be
Hijazi king `Uthman b. Huwayrith al-Asadi al-Qurashi contracted a commercial
pact to send spices to the Byzantines. Al-Isfahani contends that al-Nu`man b.
al-Mundhir imported silk (harir) and other cloth from Aden to al-Hirah.[11]
Silk cloth also apparently was imported to the region to produce some other
elegant clothing reported in the late pre-Islamic era.

But overall, the urban centers of the erstwhile Roman empire, whose requirements
for oriental luxury goods had for centuries been the lifeblood of trans-Arabian
commerce, were now in economic chaos; and in the Hijaz itself, the demand for
widespread importation of silk that had prevailed in earlier centuries has been
explicitly explained by the compiler of historical traditions, al-Bukhari. With
the rise of Islam, Muhammad banned Muslim men from wearing silk.[12]
Hence, the striking silence of the sources on a more general sixth to seventh-century
trans-Hijazi trade in spices and other oriental goods likely signaled exactly
what was meant. That trade had died.[13] Accordingly,
Crone most probably is correct when she asserts that: "Meccan trade was
thus a trade generated by Arab needs, not by the commercial appetites of the
surrounding empires," yet she errs when she continues: "and it is
as traders operating in Arabia rather than beyond its borders that the Meccans
should be seen."[14] For, as will be demonstrated,
it is not what early Makkan trade was not, but what it was, that merits further
scrutiny. Yet comprehending its composition also requires an understanding of
the economic base from which it was derived. For what the sources do describe,
as indicated, is a substantial, economically consequential, trade in fundamental
staples: consumer and industrial goods that the contemporary Hijaz unquestionably
did produce.

Finally, the sketchy evidence from which orientalists debate is most often
gleaned from the folklorist format the Arab chroniclers present. The early sources
do not pretend to be detailed economic compendia. They are instead collections
of human interest stories purporting to have, and generally enjoying, some basis
in fact. But to attempt to portray the economic vitality of the sixth to seventh-century
Hijazi based on the early Arabic sources alone, without ancillary evidence and
more advanced analytic techniques, is tantamount to attempting to reconstruct
the economy of New York state based solely upon the archives of the New
York Post. Prudent scholarship dictates that the trivialities in such
details not be magnified. As Watt states of the traditional accounts, they are
"not true in the realistic sense of the secular historian."[15]
Indeed, Crone herself acknowledges the futility of the undertaking using "the
methodology that currently prevails in the field."[15]

Though damning, however, the sheer frankness of such concessions nonetheless
simultaneously suggests that perhaps a somewhat different perspective and a
different set of analytic tools are required to define more precisely the trade
and industrial structures of the Hijaz at the rise of Islam. To these ends,
seeking to reconcile the conflicting views, the analysis that follows augments
the ongoing sixth to seventh-century Makkan "commercial structures dialogue,"
by synthesizing source documentation with extant physical evidence. We then
view the findings through the prism, and using the tools, of the modern business
economist - in so doing, drawing analogies with the operational dynamics of
contemporary commerce that display similar characteristics. This can be a productive
analytic approach. For, given the horizontally integrated free market economy
that then prevailed in West Arabia, "modified upstream development regression
analysis" - i.e., tracing the commodities of trade back to their basic
production processes, and in turn, further back to their original resource inputs
- can, in this instance, yield illuminating insights.[17]

2. The Issues in Question and the Tools Needed to Address Them

That this inquiry seeks new methods - including archaeology, radiocarbon dating,
industrial production and distribution analysis, and other modern scientific
techniques - to capture more accurately the commerce and industry of early medieval
West Arabia is no mere happenstance. Crone herself calls for better evaluative
tools and evidence. To wit: "Without correctives from outside the Islamic
tradition, such as papyri, archaeological evidence, and non-Muslim sources,
we have little hope of reconstituting the original shapes of this early period."[18]

A review of her principal concerns, thus, is in order. For, given the vigor
of the early Makkan trade dialogue precipitated by Crone through her critical
source analysis, it is illuminating to examine the principal contentions of
her thesis. Among them, she is baffled by certain bilateral trade transactions.
A two-way exchange of certain cloths, agricultural foodstuffs, and animals between
Syria and the Hijaz, for instance, is incongruous to her: "Once again,
we see the Meccans engaged in the peculiar activity of exporting coal to Newcastle
while at the same time importing it from there."[19]
In other words, if "Country X" were to produce a commodity and ship
it to "Country Y," in Crone's view, then any evidence suggesting that
"Country Y" shipped certain commodities within the same commercial
categories back to "Country X" clearly must be flawed. Yet such two-way
market flows abound in trade statistics, both historical and modern. This market
reality is precisely why French restaurants are to be found in New York and
there are "McDonald's" on the Champs-Elysees; this is also why Toyotas
are common in the streets of Detroit and Fords grace the parking lots of Tokyo.

It is not at all surprising, then, to find a diverse product mix circulating
in the early medieval Hijaz. For Makkah, with its integrated network of seasonal
markets, was legendary in its role as a key entrepôt where competing goods
from throughout the region were sold. Indeed, by its very nature, this is the
entrepôt's prime role: to serve as a commercial meeting ground. Consequently,
analysis of the trading patterns of a major modern Mideast entrepôt
such as Dubai, based on anecdotal newspaper accounts of proximate, productive
"fixed plant" industrial activity, would doubtless result in anomalies
identical to those found by Crone in sixth and seventh-century West Arabia -
portraying a caricature of this dynamic twenty-first century free port as a
mere economic backwater in the course of Euro-Afro-Asian commerce.

Such, of course, is not the case. Because demand, price, quality, and consumer
preference do invariably create their own trade patterns, it is not surprising
that early medieval Busrans and Hijazis should have displayed mutual affinities
for each others' clothing and the foodstuffs; or that such products should have
been exchanged in the contemporary markets of Makkah and its environs. Indeed,
these are the very factors that cause Pakistani leisure suits to be sold in
haberdasheries in urban centers of the West today.

Second, Crone is vexed by certain quantification concerns; to wit, that certain
episodes in the sources appear to be duplicates, "mirror images,"
of each other. Speaking of two reported early Muslim raids on northbound Makkan
commercial caravans, for instance, she states:

That the stories of the raids at Qarada and `Is are doublets
is obvious. In both stories, a Qurashi caravan loaded with silver (coined
or uncoined) is raided by Muhammad's men. The silver is owned or guarded by
Safwan b. Umayya or Abu Sufyan in the Qarada story, by Safwan b. Umayya or
Abu Sufyan in that about `Is, and the Muslim commander is Zayd b. Haritha
in both. It is hard to believe that the same commander twice intercepted a
Meccan caravan loaded with the same commodity and manned by very much the
same people.[20]

Yet upon closer scrutiny, the possibility that these parallel stories actually
are "doublets" is not as obvious as it may appear. Here, both the
political and economic dynamics in play become noteworthy, making a qualitative
reevaluation of the source evidence highly appropriate. From a military standpoint,
this was an extremely active era. Al-Waqidi documents at least ninety-three
major Muslim "ghazawat" and "saraya" in the
first Hijri decade; while Ibn Sa`d cites eighty-five and al-Dhahabi seventy-two.[21]
Within this ongoing series of armed military expeditions and raids, moreover,
there is a frequent recurrence of common commodities, as well as of key individuals,
the latter both as force commanders and as caravan leaders. Given these realities,
we may observe the following of this particular "doublet."

Though the circumstances are somewhat similar, the two confrontations nonetheless
appear at two separate, distinct, known sites, and occur three years apart.

Nor is the claim that each caravan was carrying silver that was subsequently
stolen a remarkable coincidence. For as Ibn Ishaq claims, and as will be demonstrated
below, the prime role of precious metals in such caravans was for use as "currency"
in barter transactions for other commodities that actually were the prime targets
of the multilateral trade missions.[22] What the Muslims
were plundering, then, was money - "investment capital" - common to
all caravans. This circumstance makes a different commodity mix, with the same
precious metals-denominated investment capital, probable for each individual
caravan. It likewise explains why these caravans were carrying silver both to
and from Syria, another phenomenon that concerns Crone.[23]

While Zayyid b. Harithah does serve as expedition leader in both the al-Qaradah
and al-`Is engagements, he likewise appears in numerous others, among them at
least five cited by al-Dhahabi in A.H. 6 alone, the year of his raid at al-`Is.[24]
Such raids, it seems, ranked among his prime preoccupations. So the fact that
he is cited in engagements at two sites, separated in time by three years, may
not be all that extraordinary.

There is admittedly some confusion in the sources as to who actually was in
charge of these two trade missions. Al-Dhahabi places Abu Sufyan as a member
of the caravan ambushed at al-Qaradah and Abu al-`As b. al-Rabi` in that at
al-`Is,[25] as does Ibn Ishaq.[26]
Al-Waqidi places Safwan b. Umayyah as a spokesperson within the al-Qaradah caravan
and confirms the presence of Abu al-`As and `Abd Allah b. Abi al-Rabi`ah in
the al-`Is caravan.[27] Ibn Sa`d, in turn, places Safwan
b. Umayyah and `Abd Allah b. Abi Rabi`ah within the al-Qaradah caravan and Safwan
b. Umayyah and Abu al-`As within that at al-`Is.[28]
Though there is undeniable overlap in the participations reported in these two
events, that in itself does not necessarily render them apocryphal. For Qurashi
caravans generally were quite large, at times comprising as many as 2,500 camels.
Yet they consisted of finite numbers of participants who habitually carried
the goods of others. Thus, it is not at all surpris ing to find the names of
certain principal merchants recurring in the narration of various commercial
events, nor of numerous other prominent merchants similarly cited in the sources,
among them al-Aswad b. al-Muttalib, his son Zam`ah, and Huwaytib b. `Abd al-`Uzza,
in conjunction with trade missions in general and with these two in particular.[29]

It is no way implausible to conclude from the evidence, then, that Makkan caravans
formally operated as ongoing, quasi-permanent functional units frequently containing
many of the same key players - or that participation by a merchant, or group
of merchants, in a given mission, such as at al-Qaradah, did not perforce preclude
them from involvement in another, similar trade mission three years later, such
as at al-`Is. Indeed, given the complex, integrated organizational commercial
structures then in place, it would be surprising if this scenario were not the
case. For such Makkan caravans served in a key private sector transport role
run by the same "shipping company" carrying the goods of many people.

In sum, though there are parallels in the dual accounts, it is not unequivocal
that the primary source treatment of these two raids is indeed a "doublet,"
as Crone contends. In this instance, in fact, the odds are likely that it was
not, as there is strong countervailing evidence that suggests two separate incidents.
At the close of her book, however, she returns to this allegation of "recurring
themes" with more compelling evidence, detailing "miracle stories"
attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.[30] Here, her claim
may be more plausible, as it is more likely to find embellishment by devout
followers in their descriptions of the accomplishments of someone whom they
believe to be the "Seal of the Prophets" than in their more mundane
accounts relating that Abu Sufyan customarily led commercial caravans, that
the banu Sulaym mined gold, or that Caliph Mu`awiyah was a grower of grapes.

Such realities are not ipso facto failures of scholarship, of course.
They merely indicate that further examination of the economic circumstances
is required, underscoring the cogency of Crone's call for more tangible non-documentary
evidence to augment the Islamic sources. The ultimate solution, though, lies
not in geographically transforming the Qurashis further to the north, as she
also attempts, but instead in better comprehending what the trade base really
was. For it is not what the sources do not say that is important; it is what
they do say. The evidence is finite, without doubt. But it can unquestionably
be restructured to make more economic sense - recasting the industrial determinants
of the early medieval Hijaz into a new commercial model.

Such realities thus suggest that a more productive analytic course might be
to commence by examining what we do know about the Hijazi economic dynamic at
the time of the Prophet Muhammad's religious ascendancy, synthesizing chronicled
testimony with physical artifacts representing the workings of early medieval
industrial activity residual in the region, in the search for alternate hypotheses
to explain the role of trade in forging that dynamic. The quest perforce begins
with precious metals.

II. The Preeminence of Precious Metals

As suggested above, Crone doubtless is correct when she, like Serjeant, Peters,
and others, argues that the longstanding trans-Hijazi-Mediterranean trade in
"spices" and other luxury goods that characterized the early Christian
centuries had lost much of its vitality by the sixth century A.D.[31]
But her contention may be as important for what it doesn't claim as for what
it does.[32] For an effective examination of the incipient
dynamism of the Qurashi Makkan economy probably should not initially target
export trade at all. An analogy to the economic structure of modern Saudi Arabia
is likely a more productive inquiry.

Early in the twentieth century, before the discovery of oil, an overwhelming
proportion of Hijazi public revenues - upwards of ninety percent - was derived
from providing for the needs of religious pilgrims - the identical retail trade
that had sustained the Qurashis fourteen centuries before. Merchandise exports
then were modest, not unlike those recorded in much of the most recent (1993-2003)
decade, wherein Saudi Arabia's non-oil goods and services export sales have
fluctuated between 1.32% and 2.88% of its annual gross domestic product (GDP)
formation.

Had modern trade economists sought to capture the vigor of the modern Saudi
Arabian economy based on these non-oil export figures - undeniably far more comprehensive
in its coverage than mere fragmentary commercial references contained in the
medieval Arabic sources - they would have missed entirely the fact that the Kingdom,
despite its reduced oil revenues, nonetheless has produced record real GDP creation
in recent years. The reason: liquid minerals - petroleum and its derivatives - still
constitute about seventy-five percent of the nation's aggregate annual budgetary
revenues. The lesson: absent a concerted analytic focus on other key economic,
commercial, and financial factors, measurements of merchandise and service exports
are often no more an effective gauge of economic activity today than they are
for the seventh century.

But the comparison to modern Saudi Arabia in explaining the early medieval
Qurashi economy does not end with raw export data. For Crone likewise asserts
the quite striking claim that precious metals played no economically significant
role in the contemporary Hijazi commerce: "The Meccans cannot be said to
have exported gold and silver at all.... Meccan trade thus cannot be identified
as a trade in gold."[33] Peters take the argument
further still:

There are, in fact, no external indications that Mecca
was prosperous or that there was any capital to invest.... The absence of
gold and silver coins is perhaps somewhat startling, but only because we assume
that the city lived on a monetary economy, which it almost certainly did not.
And two conclusions immediately present themselves in consequence: that Mecca
was not involved in international trade.... and second, whatever business
the Quraysh were, in fact, conducting, it had to perforce be, and appears
to have actually been, quite literally barter....[34]

Yet, as subsequent analysis will demonstrate, here both scholars can be challenged.
For careful reading of the medieval Arab geographers leaves little doubt that
at the rise of Islam, the analogue in seventh-century Arabia's western province
to its twenty-first century eastern province's abundance of liquid minerals
was hard minerals - precious metals. Elsewhere, the prominent role of indigenous
Hijazi gold and silver mining in driving the operating dynamic of the early
Islamic state has been amply documented. Their industrial and commercial contributions
cannot be underestimated. For when they are factored into the contemporary equation,
a quite different economy emerges.[35]

Indeed, the combination of source documentation and residual onsite physical
evidence makes readily apparent that one cannot begin to comprehend the functioning
of the early medieval Hijazi economy without first perceiving the indispensable
role of precious metals. Mining created a variety of production, refining, and
distribution jobs at over a thousand separate sites. Jewelry-making further
contributed to expansion of the local employment base. Gold, silver, copper,
and iron were inputs in other industrial production. Precious metals were, moreover,
the investment capital that underwrote that production. Equally significantly,
they lubricated commerce, serving as its currency base for financing import
acquisitions as well as "import substitution" indigenous industrial
development. They were, in fact, capital looking for a place to happen.

Yet, here a clarification of the role of precious metals in shaping trade is
critical. For Crone may well be right, at least in part, when she asserts that
the early Makkans did not export vast amounts of gold and silver; although,
in an age of bulk bullion transactions, the linguistic distinction between gold
"exported" in countertrade for other goods, and gold used as "currency"
to purchase other goods, may not be commercially significant. For what the foreign
recipients of such metals ultimately did with such metals is not germane to
the nature of the trade of the Hijazis. Makkan merchants undeniably did carry
substantial quantities of bullion on their international trading caravans, whether
for export or transactional purposes. Responding to Crone's specific concern
that they reportedly carried gold and silver both to and from Syria, however,
the sources make quite clear that it was the latter function - used as currency
payments for commodities - that was more common.[36]

Ibn Ishaq explicitly says, in fact, that the precious metals seized by Muslims
in their various raids on caravans was intended for use as coin. When the Muslims
won silver as booty in their raid at al-`Is in 8/630, it was trade investment
capital they were plundering. Al-Waqidi's report that al-Harith b. `Amir b.
Nawfal had 1,000 mithqals, Umayyah b. Khalaf 1,000 mithqals, members
of the banu `Abd Manaf 15,000 mithqals, and the banu Makhzum 5,000 mithqals
of gold invested in one of Abu Sufyan's periodic northbound Syrian caravans
concurrently makes clear that it was carried in the form of bullion to be used
as currency to underwrite commerce.[37]

Abu Baqa', in turn, claims that it was this quite common use of bullion in
monetary transactions that caused one Syrian customs agent to query `Umar b.
al-Khattab in some astonishment: "A caravan of Quraysh coming to Syria
without gold? That isn't possible!"[38] Contending
that gold was the driving force behind their commerce, he adds that the Ghassanids
would customarily relieve Makkan merchants of a portion of it in transit fees
whenever Hijazi caravans passed through their territories.[39]

Important for understanding the economic dynamic of contemporary west Arabia,
then, is the reality that precious metals were the prevailing current denominator.
Early Hijazi mining proceeds created quality jobs, incomes, marketable products,
and all of the stimulatory economic multiplier effects normally attendant thereto.
But it was in their contemporary use as "money" that precious metals
made their greatest financial impact.

There were other proximate currencies percolating throughout the Near East
in pre-Islamic times, to be sure, including the Byzantine gold dinar and the
Persian silver dirham. Indeed, the Qur'an explicitly mentions the dinar,[40]
the dirham,[41] and the waraq[42]
- the latter defined by al-Mawardi also as a "silver coin,"[43]
most probably of Himyaritic issue - and it was the specific weights of such
foreign currencies that were the denominational basis for determining by proxy
the value of the Hijazis' precious metal bullion used in commerce. Thus, the
Arab sources commonly describe early Muslim commercial transactions in dinar
and dirham terms - employing them as numeraires - monetary benchmarks
corresponding to specific common-use bullion weights, as there were very few
"Arabic" coins struck in the first half century of Islam.

For, irrespective of the provenance of any particular currency denominator,
use of precious metals in their uncast state was the preponderant transactional
practice. By way of example, the qintar was a bullion coin weight equivalent
to 4,000 dinars. Al-Baladhuri attests to the widespread operation of this bulk
bullion trading practice,[44] a claim affirmed by al-Maqrizi[45]
and Ibn Sa`d.[46] In sum, indigenously produced Hijazi
gold and silver were the "capital bridge" that compensated for commodity
trade deficits, making possible acquisitions that were not directly attainable
through barter; and because of them, the values of commodity exports did not,
of necessity, have to equal the values of product imports. A review of the extant
evidence is illuminating.

In compelling confirmation that the medieval Arab chronicler's claims of abundant
wealth in precious metals were not entirely apocryphal, there exists much physical
testimony that documents their continuing existence. Indeed, hundreds of early
medieval Hijazi-west-central Najdi mining locations are known, and some are
even now being reopened for production. Several sites merit particular attention.
Among them, the productivity of "al-Mindah" mine is lavishly lauded
in pre-Islamic poetry; and several others - Mahd al-Dhahab, al-Nuqrah, Bahran,
and Biram among them - are directly linked by Arabic historical geographies
to contemporary activities of the Prophet Muhammad's Quraysh tribe.[47]
Many others of the more than 1,000 sites in West Arabia mined in the early Middle
Ages, whose residual evidence remains, likely were also active in his era. Indeed,
carbon 14 datings from wood residuals at the smelters that supported these mining
operation activities suggest that many dated to the pre-Islamic age and the
earliest decades of Islam.[48]

The financing of these early medieval Arabian mining operations appears to
have been a "hybrid" individual/corporate system wherein private capital
was employed. The purchase of one particular mine by `Umar b. `Abd al-`Aziz,
and the collective ownership of the principal banu Sulaym mine, Mahd al-Dhahab,
in the caliphal reign of `Umar b. al-Khattab will be described presently. Al-Baladhuri
relates that, at the rise of Islam, the tax-farming of state mining properties
whereby mines would be consigned to private interests in exchange for payment
of the zakat, or alternately, the khums levy - was also prevalent.
Both he and al-Bakri cite a variety of mining properties that were tax-farmed
as "iqta`at" to local entrepreneurs by the Prophet Muhammad.[49]

Private exploration and discovery likewise appear to have played key roles
in mine ownership. Ibn Hajar quotes members of the banu Lihb as asserting "We
brought the Prophet of God ore from al-`Aqiq, and he wrote us a letter stating:
'Whoever finds something, it is his - and the twenty percent tax (khums)
is to be levied on precious metals.'" Given the abundance of privately
owned medieval mining properties that are documented in the Arabic sources whose
physical evidence remains, then, it is clear that precious metals production
was a key private sector industry in Muhammad's era.

Indeed, many of these mining sites clearly were "big business." Source
evidence and the remnants of on-site barrack-like structures indicate that they
were often labor-intensive, employing as many as two thousand men. Production
volumes also were impressive. Evidence suggests that in historic times an estimated
1,500,000 ounces of gold were produced from the more than one million tons of
ore mined at the still producing mine Mahd al-Dhahab; and that more than 1,000,000
ounces of gold were produced at al-Hamdah in the early medieval era as well.

In the early medieval Hijaz, gold and silver reigned preeminent. They were
the key determinants that distinguished the relatively wealthy Makkan economy
from its early medieval Near East counterparts. To take these valued commodities
out of the contemporary West Arabian trade scene, then, would unquestionably
produce the same economically vacuous results as if oil were to be deleted from
modern Saudi Arabia's export data. To project the full economic picture, precious
metals, predominant components of both local industry and commerce, must be
factored in. Credit precious metals with their proper role in driving the operating
dynamic of the Hijaz economy at the dawn of Islam, however, and the remaining
dimensions of the contemporary commercial and industrial picture fall readily
into place.

The Question of an "Arabia Without Spices"
(Instead With Gold and Silver)

I. The Framework for Debate

Analysis to this point has focused upon Crone's controversial trade claims.
Yet, if a fuller contemporary commercial picture is to exist, the scope of analytic
inquiry must be more encompassing than mere concerted focus on a single scholar's
contributions, however careful their construction or compelling their contentions.
Indeed, to ensure optimal accuracy, scientific evaluation must transcend historiographic
revisionism, tempering existing evidence with tests of classic economic theory.

Questions of both the chronology and character of pre-Islamic commerce have
recently received considerable attention from other, equally distinguished medieval
Near East historians. Robert Simon, Mahmood Ibrahim, and F. E. Peters, for instance,
are likely quite correct in their concurrence that the sixth century witnessed
dramatic geopolitical developments that precipitated the culmination of the
gradual transformation of the Makkan economy from a transit trade in luxury
goods to the regional distribution of more basic, indigenously produced consumer
goods. Simon states that "the rise of Makkan trade and the beginning of
North Arabian history were not bolts from the blue, but were in close causal
relationship with the history of the neighboring powers, i.e., Mecca's history
was part of contemporary world history."[50]

There is much to commend this contention. For the economies of the early medieval
Red Sea littoral and southern Mediterranean basin were neither "static"
economic systems, nor did they evolve in isolation, but instead were profoundly
impacted by powerful synergies between them. Hence, the Qurashis' preeminence
in early medieval Hijazi trade was no accident. Indeed, the convenient convergence
of a sixth-century series of significant events had, almost by default, delivered
control of ongoing commerce directly into their hands.

Those events, largely economic at their origin, included: (i) an intensely
hostile military confrontation between the Byzantines and the Sasanids within
the region throughout much of the sixth century; (ii) attendant exorbitant tariffs
and import and export controls imposed by these twin combatants upon goods transiting
their borders; (iii) a series of trade-related alliances and counter-alliances
between them and the Abyssinians and Yemenis; (iv) attempts to set up allied
local tribal chiefs as "kings" on the Arabian Peninsula; (v) various
skirmishes between these twin superpowers' trade vassals within the western
peninsula, the Ghassanids and the Lakhmids respectively; and finally, (vi) Abyssinian
occupation of Yemen in A.D. 525, which significantly disrupted Sasanid northbound
commerce and diplomacy.[51]

These sundry conspiracies and intrigues predictably failed, it appears in retrospect,
because of the unyielding natures both of the region and of its diverse inhabitants.
Describing the unsuccessful attempt of the Byzantines to install Christian convert
`Uthman b. al-Huwayrith al-Asadi al-Qurashi as a proxy "King of Makkah"
as part of their strategic commercial initiative, for instance, al-Zubayr b.
Bakkar calls the Qurashis "a fiercely independent people who would never
subject themselves to the sovereignty of a king." Accordingly, while the
Byzantines and Sasanids were militarily engaged with each other, the Qurashis
quickly moved in to fill the resultant economic and administrative voids.[52]

Adroitly perceiving the resulting commercial vacuum, according to medieval
Arabic sources, the Hashimi clan of the banu Quraysh now moved with great dispatch.
Among their various initiatives, for instance, they immediately concluded trade
agreements with local representatives of the regional superpowers situated at
their Arabian peninsula borders to broker their goods, as well as with other
indigenous tribes guaranteeing them shares of the profits in exchange for security
for Qurashi caravans as they transited their territories.[53]

The failure of the Yemeni invasion of the Hijaz in A.D. 570, moreover, combined
with the "Hurub al-Fijar" - a series of petty intertribal wars
for commercial control of West Central Arabia circa A.D. 580 wherein the Qurashis
vanquished the banu Hawazin, banu Qays, and other allies of the regional commercial
power, al-Hirah - would ultimately assure the Hashimis preeminent trade hegemony.
These developments would likewise soon prove seminal not only for the Qurashis'
own economic interests but also for the evolution of the Hijaz itself as a formidable
commercial force. For the Hashimi ruling elite quickly demonstrated far-reaching
economic and diplomatic talents, the effective range of which transcended the
borders of the peninsula, producing a flourish of regional trade expansions
involving key exports as well as imports. Their achievements concurrently enhanced
the geographic mobility of Qurashi merchants within an ever-expanding network
of mercantile activities.[54]

Combined with these tectonic political and economic shifts, and attendant changes
in Mediterranean-based market demand levels, it is likely not coincidental that
the commodity mix of trans-Hijazi trade now gradually devolved from those "upscale,"
high unit-value oriental goods previously demanded by the rapidly degenerating
urban centers of the Roman Empire as well as by Byzantium's war-ravaged and
economically deteriorating provinces, to higher volume, lower unit-value Arab
goods, in order to meet more fundamental consumer requirements in the proximate
Near East. For, with Yemen and al-Hirah also both in decline, and with the Byzantines
and Sasanids mutually preoccupied, the Qurashis' political and commercial interests
were now effectively unleashed and unconstrained.

Accordingly, the Arabic chronicles are likely quite accurate in portraying
the first/seventh-century Hijaz as an integrated, multidirectional commercial
emporium trading in the exchange of basic staples and the import of fundamental
economic needs. From the north arrived the oils, foodstuffs, grains, wines,
clothing, and weaponry of Syria and Iraq; from Persia to the northeast, iron
products, musk, ambergris, and jewels; from the west, the slaves, ivory, and
incense of Abyssinia; and from the south, the cloths and perfumes of Yemen.
Concurring in the commercial portrayal that the sources describe, the analyses
of Simon, Ibrahim, and Peters are probably generally correct in identifying
within its trade flows "aromatics," such as frankincense and laudanum,
indigenous to the Arabian peninsula, and not the more general "condiments,"
such as ginger, pepper, and other seasonings that Crone evaluates in her broader
interpretation of the English term "spices."[55]

Yet, while the primary Arabic sources for sixth-century Arabia do speak of
an ongoing trade in "aromatics," with only passing references to "condiments,"
the evidence is not entirely unequivocal. Various sources, for instance, cite
an aloewood used as incense in the Hijaz at the dawn of Islam called "Indian
wood" (`ud al-Hind). There are similar indications that ginger was
exported to Aden from India and Ceylon, from classic antiquity through the sixth
and seventh centuries, and it is likewise cited in the Qur'an using its Indian
name: zanjabil. The fourth/tenth-century Arab scholar, al-Qummi, asserts
that the Quraysh also exported pepper, as well as cloth and leather goods, from
the Hijaz to Syria. Thus, the sources provide certain indications that throughout
this era, the Hijaz continued to be a venue for at least some Indian subcontinent
"luxury goods" - most likely to meet Arabian peninsula and other proximate
southwest Asian market demand.[56]

The fundamental nature of the private financial system that underwrote economic
activity in the contemporary Hijaz is likewise a source of scholarly contention
that merits further scrutiny. In such a focus, of course, clear distinction
must be drawn between "mercantile capitalism" - surplus capital generated
as profits at the margin through commercial exchange - and "industrial capitalism" - investment
capital employed to underwrite facilities of production. Mahmood Ibrahim, for
example, accepts the contemporary utility of mercantile capitalism, while discounting
industrial capitalism, in framing an economic model for sixth-century Arabia,
whereas Simon and Peters do not. Contending that Makkan merchants merely traded
in the goods of others, Ibrahim states:

Merchant capital is that fraction of capital that
is generated purely through exchange, whether merchants controlled the means
of production, as in Yemen, or not, as in Mecca.... As they did not own means
of production at the time, Meccan merchants merely bought and sold their merchandise,
accumulating profit as they increased commercial activity and enlarged the
area of their market.... Having on surplus of their own, Mecca's merchants
thus accumulated capital only through trade occasioned by the institution
of the haram, providing us with a classic illustration of exchange
as the origin of merchant capital.[57]

Yet here, both conclusions may be challenged. For the sources clearly suggest
that both capitalistic structures were very much in evidence, particularly in
the era of Muhammad when the dynamics of "Islamic economics" were
initially being forged. While the evidence is less comprehensive for the pre-Islamic
era, it is nonetheless clear that, by the first half of the seventh century,
West Arabia was far more than a mere string of way-stations on the classic trade
routes of antiquity. The region was instead a significant production center
that manufactured commodities in surplus to be marketed by its merchants in
regional commerce. It is how that productive investment was financed at its
inception that merits further consideration.

For as subsequent sections demonstrate, many first/seventh-century entrepreneurs
were sufficiently wealthy that no external investment capital was necessary
to underwrite their productive ventures. Abu Talib, for instance, was among
the Makkan wheat growers who sold their own produce, according to Ibn Qutaybah.[58]
Al-Baladhuri relates the grudging assessment by `Umar b. `Abd al-`Aziz of an
unproductive mining property that he had purchased from the offspring of Bilal
b. al-Harith al-Muzani which had been previously awarded to his family as a
land concession by Prophet Muhammad. "Look at what was extracted from it
and what I spent on it," he complains.[59]

But there likewise were collective forms of productive investment. At the rise
of Islam, practically every wealthy Makkan was invested in agrarian properties
near al-Ta'if.[60] Al-Baladhuri describes a land reclamation
partnership between Harb b. Umayyah and sundry Sulamis that was financed with
a mudarabah contract.[61] Al-Bakri, in turn,
speaks of a dispute at Mahd al-Dhahab gold mine among the original investors,
mine workers, and other Sulamis in the caliphal reign of `Umar b. al-Khattab.[62]
Hence, though source references more commonly appear in commercial transactions,
the concept of "pooled investment capital" to finance goods production
was not unknown in the sixth and seventh centuries.[63]

It may be concluded, then, that the more prevalent commerce-based form of aggregate
capital employment was due to its use as much as an income transfer mechanism
aimed at wealth redistribution as to its use as a capital mobilization instrument.
Some sources, al-Qurtubi among them, for example, indicate that Hashim, progenitor
of the Quraysh, urged lesser merchants to pool their capital in order to gain
from strength in numbers. Such comparative advantage appears to have been critical.
For the sources suggest that this was an age of keen mercantile competition,
with munafarah, an intense vying for social status based on wealth and
material strength, in the ascendancy - and with financial failure according
to some sources, even leading at times certain commercially unfortunate Makkan
merchants to contemplate ritual suicide (i`tifad).[64]

The institutions of sadaqah (alms-giving, and later zakat), rifadah
(providing food), and siqayah (providing water) - as well as the banning
of monopolistic practices (ihtikar) - were similar mechanisms aimed at
wealth redistribution as well as at attracting pilgrim merchants to Makkah.
To underwrite the costs of such provisions, the Qurashi progenitor Qusayy b.
Kilab levied taxes on both indigenous and incoming merchants. Thus, as Ibrahim
contends, the notion of pooled merchant capital as a welfare institution, as
well as a commercial capitalization tool, must not be discounted. Indeed, it
was integral to the Qurashis' innovative marketing approach of brokered security
(khafarah) caravan (ilafi) traffic.[65]

The evolution of each of these commercial phenomena, therefore, deserves further
study in combination both with what the Arab chroniclers claim and what today
remains in the form of tangible physical evidence. Given the general pedagogic
skepticism regarding the reliability of the early Arabic sources, much of the
current scholarly debate has centered upon "evaluative methodology."
Which analytic tools can most effectively be employed to substantiate or discredit
extant data? The forensic undertaking is complicated by the highly fragmentary
nature of the source accounts themselves. For often a mass of anecdotal data
must be woven together in the quest for a more consistent, rational whole. The
difficulty has been compounded further by the targeted focus of modern inquiry.
However, the narration of functional economic history was usually not the foremost
objective of the medieval Arab chronicler.

Given such challenges, Crone and others have called for new analytic tools
to examine the extant body of finite evidence. The challenge is daunting. Yet
such tools often do exist. Among them are physical remains, such as mining tailings,
remnants of dams and other edifices, as well as the evaluative techniques of
modern economic analysis.

The historiographic challenge thus is significant. Absent incontrovertible
evidence, a substantial measure of deductive reasoning often is required to
ascertain underlying economic realities. For while there are residual tailings
that indicate the undertaking of medieval West Arabian mining, and the ruins
of contemporary dams to suggest the cultivation of agriculture, there is no
market produce that reveals a specific commercial commodity mix, nor "Geniza
documents" to demonstrate the incidence of trade, nor often, even an abundance
of artifacts to prove the workings of particular crafts. Concurrently, the possibility
cannot be discounted that certain economic manifestations that do exist are
ex post facto phenomena produced in later Umayyad or even early `Abbasid
times. Analysis thus must focus on people, events, and artifacts whose existence
can be linked to times and places certain.

The textual evidence is undeniably finite, diverse, and complex, to be sure.
At the same time, it is often complementary, with each part comprising a piece
of a greater puzzle, capturing a collage of synergistic production and distribution
functions that can be retrofitted to recreate the operations of a functional
market-driven industrial system. In this quest, the sources provide a certain
corroborative utility, since at least five documented cross-checks can be combined
to offer a fuller economic picture. They include: (i) Qur'anic references to
the pursuit of specific industries and crafts; (ii) chroniclers' accounts of
private sector undertakings of such productive activities; (iii) source references
to official attempts to promote their operational development; (iv) documentation
attesting to systematic trade in the resulting products; and (v) accounts of
regulation of that trade by Muhammad and other contemporary authorities.

The prospects for corroboration thus compel the analyst to evaluate any given
body of textual evidence as a "data composite," seeking to discern,
in detail, what the totality of information, both chronicled and physical, may
reveal about a particular economic function's operation and chronology. Part
of the analytic challenge is subjective, part must be empirical. In the first
instance, the challenge is to ascertain whether, in a particular circumstance,
if the testimony of a given source is suspect, perhaps through an error in transmission
or reception, could other, corroborating, chroniclers, acting independently,
have made the identical mistake?

In the latter case, artifacts and advanced technology-based analytic tools - such
as infrared sensing and radiometric dating - can fill in the blanks left by the
written manuscripts. But while scientific evaluation as well as the application
of modern economic theory can aid in the discovery process, they too clearly
have their limitations. For while they may provide snapshots of specific economic
phenomena at a given time, they nonetheless still require the reliability of
corroborating evidence, including the veracity of the medieval Arabic sources,
to develop a fuller picture. The underlying determinant, in each instance, must
again revert to the subjective issue of "preponderant plausibility,"
when the data are viewed in aggregate.

In other words, does the combination of what the sources have to say convey
a coherent economic logic? If in microeconomic functioning, for instance, they
are remarkably accurate in depicting the mechanical operations of early medieval
precious metals mining, of which there is ample physical proof, why should one
then conclude that they are categorically wrong about trade, the crafts, and
agriculture, of which there is less tangible proof? Here, however, the crucial
distinction may often be less one of kind than of degree. To wit, despite a
possible embellishment in numbers, does a given source provide a probable underlying
truth in its data documenting the functioning of a particular industrial sector?

The medieval Arab chroniclers were not entirely oblivious to economic reality,
and hence deserve a certain attention in measuring their merit. As R. B. Serjeant
has aptly stated: "criticism of historical sources should aim at eliciting
from them what is possible to accept as evidence, not at manufacturing a case
for destroying them in toto."[66] This
goal is crucial in reconstructing early medieval Arab economic history. For,
without a reasonable willingness to accept elements of truth in the early source
accounts, there remains no basis for meaningful commercial and industrial reconstruction
of the first/seventh-century Hijaz. Moreover, analysis is left with the improbable
conclusion that Arab chroniclers, working quasi-autonomously on an ad hoc
basis, a full seven centuries before Adam Smith, heuristically and inadvertently
derived an almost perfect (albeit fictitious) working model of what today is
known as "free market economics."

Defining the Economic Dynamics of The First/Seventh-Century
Hijaz

Having fixed the primacy of precious metals at the core of early medieval Western
Arabian economic operations, the challenge becomes that of fitting into place
remaining pieces of the contemporary industrial and commercial puzzle - a match
made possible by the availability of significant, albeit anecdotal, source data.
Indeed, when viewed in aggregate, and through the analytic prism of modern economic
theory, the chroniclers' accounts often may be seen not as mere human interest
stories, but as complementary components of a highly functional, integrated
microeconomic system.

The ready availability of adequate supplies of investment capital to support
production has previously been demonstrated; and with such finance available
in abundance, a greater understanding of the other factors of production falls
into place. At this stage, a review of the uses to which these capital resources
were put, as well as of the operations of the economic base industries to which
they were committed will be helpful.

1. The Productivity of Agriculture

Despite the barren setting, there can be little doubt that agriculture played
a key role in the commercial vitality of the first/seventh-century Hijaz. The
region's landscape was dotted with trees, bushes, grasses, and plants, and fertile
oases existed at al-Ta'if, al-Nakhlah, Khaybar, Fadak, Turabah, Yanbu`, Wadi
al-Qura, al-Suwarqiyah, Wadi al-`Aqiq, throughout al-Madinah region, and elsewhere.
The `Asir, to the south, also historically served as a key breadbasket for West
Arabia. The farm produce of these areas included grains such as wheat and barley,
sorghum, alfalfa, a wide variety of vegetables, citrus and other fruits, grapes,
olives, dates, and pomegranates.

Al-Ta'if, called by al-Qalqashandi "a little bit of Heaven transported
by God from Syria to the Hijaz" - a beneficiary of a substantial 200-450
millimeters of rain annually - was particularly known for its grape and raisin
production, with Mu`awiyah b. Abi Sufyan, `Abd Allah b. `Abbas, al-`Abbas b.
`Abd al-Muttalib, Abu Talib, and `Amr b. al-`As all owning large vineyards there.
It, together with al-Madinah, was also legendary for exporting quality wines
made from dates and grapes. Indeed, the very first booty won by Muhammad's newly
formed Muslim forces were al-Ta'ifi wines, raisins, and leather goods seized
from a Qurashi caravan in their raid at al-Nakhlah.[67]

Dates, another farm product, also were ubiquitous and were used not only as
a basic foodstuff but also as an in-kind currency to settle commercial obligations.
Because of their durability, raisins too were extremely convenient foodstuffs,
both as commercial goods and consumables, the latter particularly on lengthy
trade and military expeditions. They likewise could be used in local desalination
and water-purification processes, and al-Istakhri indicate that their production
was another prime industry of al-Ta'if region. Of these farm products, the Qur'an
states: "We grow for you gardens of date palms and vines; in them, you
have abundant fruit, and of them, you eat."[68]
Various regions throughout the Hijaz distinguished themselves through their
cultivation of particular farm products. Numerous Qu'ranic verses testify to
the abundance of dates, grapes, grains, fruits, and vegetables produced in the
vicinity of al-Madinah. The fruit and date farms of al-Ta'if were famous both
for their quantity and quality of output. Khaybar similarly was known for its
fine dates, whereas Dumat al-Jandal (modern al-Jawf) was situated in an area
propitious for the production of dates as well as cereals.[69]

Hijazi agriculture was frequently carried out on a significant scale. Capital
availability was a key to its success, with wealthy citizens often cited as
major financiers of agrarian activities. In al-Madinah region, Mu`awiyah b.
Abi Sufyan and Talhah b. `Ubayd Allah appear as major wheat growers, with the
latter credited as the first to grow wheat in Wadi Qanah north of the city.
The sources report that investments in ten farms by Mu`awiyah, who owned numerous
grain and date-producing properties in the vicinities of Makkah and al-Madinah,
resulted annually in the production of 150,000 camel loads of dates and 100,000
camel loads of wheat.[70] This future caliph also dedicated
special care to developing properties in the Wadi al-Qura area and elsewhere
that had been previously owned by Jewish farmers. The famed Muslim conqueror
of Egypt, `Amr b. al-`As, is said to have had a vineyard in al-Ta'if that contained
more than one million vines; whereas Hamzah b. `Abd Allah b. Zubayr owned a
grove of 20,000 date palms in al-Furu`. Al-Samhudi relates that Ja`far b. Talhah
spent 200,000 dinars for land reclamation on his estate in Umm `Iyyal, which
contained 20,000 spring-irrigated date palms that produced 4,000 dinars in annual
income.[71]

Livestock likewise was a key industry at the dawn of Islam, with animal herds
frequently very large. We have already noted that caravans consisting of as
many as 2,500 camels are cited in the sources. The victorious Muslim forces
reportedly seized 24,000 camels in the battle of Hunayn in the year 8/630. Ibn
`Abd al-Barr asserts that future caliph `Uthman b. `Affan personally contributed
950 camels, 50 horses, and 1,000 dinars to the embryonic Islamic army. Over
1,000 horses participated in the Muslims' conquest of Makkah in 8/630; and in
the battle of Badr in 2/624, Prophet Muhammad is said to have employed seventy
camels in his cavalry.[72] Mu`awiyah b. Abi Sufyan
similarly was reportedly the beneficiary of an animal bequest involving 2,000
sheep,[73] and Zubayr b. Bakkar relates that a prime
occupation of Hakim b. Hizam was marketing camels at the Makkah market.[74]
He likewise relates the purchase of a female slave in exchange for 100 she-camels.[75]

Thus, farming clearly was a significant industry within Islam's birthplace,
the Hijaz. And again, there is physical evidence, in the form of remains of
irrigation canals and dams dating to this period, to support the documentary
sources. Indeed, the remnants of at least nineteen dams from that period still
exist in various state of preservation in the Hijaz - thirteen in al-Ta'if region,
three in the vicinity of the Khaybar Oasis, and three near al-Madinah. While
many of these dams were built in the early Islamic era, recent archaeological
expeditions investigating their structural design and provenance suggest that
some, such as "Sadd Qasr al-Bint," in the Khaybar region, likely are
attributable to late pre-Islamic times.[76]

2. The Output of Manufacturing

The non-agricultural industrial base of the early medieval Hijaz was likewise
quite diverse, ranging from mining to hunting and fishing, to construction and
manufacturing, and other productive undertakings. Amongst the various enterprises,
indigenous manufacturing was an industrial sector that consisted of several
substantial sub-sectors, as Hijazi craftsmen were engaged in diverse productive
activities that created a noteworthy selection of marketable commodities. For
illustrative purposes, let us focus on five key sub-sectors: (i) jewelry-smithing,
(ii) black-smithing, (iii) tanning, (iv) textiles, and (v) perfumes.

(i) Jewelry-Smithing. Because of the
proliferation of indigenous gold and silver, it was logical that jewelry-making
would become a key profession. Hijazis were historically known for their love
of decoration with precious metals, and the Qur'an abounds with references to
gold and silver as esteemed possessions. For instance, "Fair in the eyes
of men is the love of things they covet; women and sons; heaped up hoards of
gold and silver"; and "For them will be Gardens of Eternity; beneath
them, rivers will flow; they will be adorned therein with bracelets of gold."[77]
Malik b. Anas relates that so passionate were local Arabs in their reverence
for gold and silver tableware at this time that the Prophet felt compelled to
ban its production and use as being an ostentatious detraction from religious
observance.[78]

Jewelry-making was a specialty of Jews in general - and of the Jewish banu
Qaynaqa` in al-Madinah in particular. This city was especially known for its
craftsmen of precious metals throughout early medieval times. Al-Salihi al-Shami
relates that when Prophet Muhammad vanquished the banu Qaynaqa` in al-Madinah,
he seized great numbers of swords and black-smithing and jewelry-making equipment.[79]
Al-Waqidi, in turn, affirms that the principal products sold in "suq bani
Qaynaqa` in the pre-Islamic era were jewelry, bows, lances, and swords.[76]
Indeed, Medinese jewelers, together with the goldsmiths of Fadak and Khaybar,
were regionally renowned for the quality of their work; and al-Samhudi, citing
Ibn Zubalah, indicates that there were more than three hundred jewelers at this
time in the Medinese suburb of al-Zuhrah alone.[81]

Makkah, al-Ta'if, and Wadi al-Qura likewise reportedly had sizable jewelry-smithing
sectors. Their output doubtless enjoyed a receptive market, as references to
jewelry permeate the sources - and include descriptions of opulent rings, earrings,
bracelets and anklets, bangles, pendants, and other objects of adornment. One
lady of al-Madinah, Zaynab bint Mu`awiyah al-Thaqafiyah, reportedly owned a
necklace whose gold content weighed more than twenty mithqals.[82]

Gold and silver plating also was a handicraft pursued by early medieval Hijazi
jewelry smiths. The sword worn by Prophet Muhammad upon his triumphant entry
into Makkah in 630 reportedly had gold and silver inlay. The sword of Abu Jahl,
seized as booty in the Battle of Badr in the year 2/624, is said to have had
similar features; and lances and shields likewise were often embellished in
this manner. Doors and window frames were a particular focus of gold-leaf decoration.
Al-Azraqi, al-Fasi, and al-Qutbi relate that in pre-Islamic times, Qurashi tribal
chieftains would take great pride in embellishing the Ka`bah with elaborate
gold and silver overlay - a practice that has been perpetuated until the present
day.[83]

(ii) Blacksmithing. With iron ore and
copper available in commercial quantities on the Arabian peninsula, blacksmithing
was another craft practiced in many of the towns and villages of the sixth and
seventh-century Hijaz. Production included weapons, tools, utensils, and sundry
other iron goods, as well as local copper kitchenware and piping. Pre-Islamic
poetry extols the virtues of professional iron-working.[84]
When the first/seventh-century Arab conquests dramatically increased the contemporary
demand for weaponry such as swords, shields, arrowheads, and other instruments
of war, additional iron ore was imported from India and Persia via al-Basrah
for use in armaments production. Hijazi craftsmen thus made metal-working a
significant cottage industry at the rise of Islam. Indeed, the sources indicate
that there were at least thirty prominent blacksmiths plying their trade during
the Prophet's era in Khaybar. They further relate that at the siege of al-Ta'if,
after the battle of Hunayn in 8/630, a Roman slave skilled in smithing, who
took the name al-Azraq b. `Uqbah al-Thaqafi after defecting to the Muslim camp
and embracing Islam, became renowned for his work. Al-Azdi reports the presence
of wholesale iron dealers operating in al-Madinah at this time as well.[85]

Local metal-working output appears to have been substantial. Upon the Muslims'
subjugation of the banu Qurayzah in 5/626, for instance, the victorious troops
reportedly seized 1,500 swords, 2,000 lances, 300 suits of armor, and 500 shields.
Three thousand lances are also said to have been employed in the battle of Hunayn
in 8/630, an encounter wherein, the chroniclers claim, Muhammad armed his troops
for battle with two hundred suits of armor provided by Safwan b. Umayyah.[86]
The Qur'an makes frequent references to body armor - for instance, "Make
thou coats of mail; balancing well the rings of chain armor"; and "It
was We who taught the making of coats of mail for your benefit to guard you
from each other's violence."[87] The Qur'an, in
fact, devotes an entire chapter to iron, Surat al-Hadid, where we find
the following verse: "We sent down iron, an ingredient for war, as well
as having many benefits for mankind."[88]

Muhammad's son Ibrahim's day-care was provided by the wife of a blacksmith,
Abu Sayf. Another of his close acquaintances was the Makkan blacksmith, Khabbab
b. al-Aratt, who also specialized in the manufacture of swords. He is cited
in the sources as having made a number of swords for al-`Isa b. Wa'il, tribal
chieftain of the banu Jumah. An apprentice, Marzuq al-Sayqal, worked with him
as a "metal-polisher"; and together, they reportedly embellished the
Prophet's favorite sword, dhu al-Faqar, which, Ibn Sa`d reports, had been seized
as booty by the Muslims from the Quraysh in the battle of Badr. Walid b. al-Mughirah,
al-`As b. Hisham, and al-Azraq b. `Uqbah al-Thaqafi are among other Arab blacksmiths
known to history; the latter, according to al-Baladhuri, having been a slave
freed by Prophet Muhammad after the conquest of al-Ta'if.[89]

(iii) Tanning and Leather-Making. Given
the abundant livestock resources of the early medieval Hijaz, it was logical
that the preparation (al-dibaghah) of animal hides and skins (adm)
for leather should likewise become a key contemporary industry. To this end,
leather craftsmen would purchase hides from local tanners to manufacture tents,
saddles, bridles, sword sheaths, shields, knapsacks, clothing, shoes, sandals,
belts, sacks, food containers, floor coverings, water basins, bottles, and other
containers. Even certain very prominent Makkans, among them Abu Sufyan b. Harb
and Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani, reportedly worked as leather merchants. The sources
relate that both men and women were involved in the tanning profession, the
economic significance of which is indicated in the Qur'anic verse: "It
is God who made your habitations homes of rest for you; and made for you out
of the skins of animals dwellings which you find most light when you pause in
your travels; and makes out of their wool and soft fibers valuable things and
articles of convenience to serve you."[90]

Leather-making was particularly prominent in al-Ta'if area, a region famous
for the quality of its production to the extent that it enjoyed a significant
export market, not only to Suq `Ukaz and other neighboring areas, but also to
Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Persia, Iraq, and Abyssinia. The fourth/tenth-century Yemeni
geographer al-Hamdani marvels at the extent of al-Ta'if's leather industry,
calling it "a land of tanners," and al-Waqidi and other chroniclers
as well cite numerous commercial caravans departing from there bearing leather
goods.[91]

In this trade, the sources relate that Hashim b. `Abd Manaf commenced his commercial
career by gaining official permission to sell leather goods in Byzantine-occupied
Syria. They likewise contain various references to camel caravans bearing leather
goods from the Hijaz to Syria as well as to `Amr b. al-`As and others selling
Hijazi leather goods in Egypt and Abyssinia; and indeed to `Amr b. al-`As ostensibly
discussing the merits of his Hijazi hides with the latter's ruler. Amongst the
first goods seized by the Muslims as booty was al-Ta'ifi leather, in their raid
on a Makkan caravan at al-Nakhlah.[92]

An abundance of both wild and domesticated animals, combined with a suitable
climate, made al-Ta'if region a natural center for the processing of hides and
for leather goods manufacturing. In addition, qaraz trees, which produced
a substance used in tanning, were indigenous to both the Hijaz and the Najd.
This product appears to have enjoyed a brisk demand, as one Companion of Muhammad
reportedly became so wealthy brokering it that he was known as "Sa`d al-Qaraz."[93]

Other cities of the region developed significant tanning and leather-making
industries as well. Both Makkah and al-Madinah had major hide-processing centers,
importing their qaraz from Wadi al-`Aqiq, near al-Madinah. A variety
of sources suggest that the sale of leather goods in the regional markets was
generally quite buoyant, particularly at the peak of the pilgrimage season.[94]

(iv) Textiles and Weaving. Hijazi textiles
also were a flourishing industry. Weaving was an art form in early medieval
Arabia that capitalized upon the ready availability of various raw materials.
Wool was available in abundance. It was an input in the production of yarn,
which local craftsmen specialized in weaving into useful household and clothing
articles. Dying and sewing cloths also were key sub-sectors of this industry,
and al-Bukhari devotes several chapters of his book of traditions to their pursuit.
Various Companions of the Prophet - among them `Abd al-Rahman b. 'Awf, `Amr
b. al-`As, al-Zubayr b. `Awwam, Talhah b. `Ubayd Allah, and future caliphs Abu
Bakr and `Uthman b. `Affan - are said to have specialized as cloth (bazz)
merchants, marketing their output in the aswaq of al-Madinah.[95]

This was a significant regional industrial sector, both in trade and manufacture.
Al-Waqidi cites the inventories of one merchant consisting of 1,500 articles
of clothing and twenty bales of Yemeni cloth on sale in al-Madinah during the
time of the Prophet; and other sources indicate that at one point in Muhammad's
era, no less than seven caravans bearing Syrian cloth arrived in al-Madinah
in a single day. Egyptian and Coptic textiles likewise made their way along
well-plied trade routes to a variety of Hijazi markets.[96]
Slaves appear to have been extensively involved in indigenous clothing manufacture.
Al-Isfahani states that `Umar b. Abi Rabi`ah owned seventy slaves who were engaged
in weaving,[97] that members of the banu Makhzum employed
slaves for the same purpose,[98] and still others were
involved in weaving date-palm leaves into baskets and other useful products.[99]

Kiswahs from the early Islamic era - coverings measuring fourteen meters
by forty-seven meters, bearing gold and silver decorative embroidering (and
later Qur'anic verses), made each year to cover the Ka`bah during the pilgrimage
season - evince sophisticated tailoring.[100] They
were not invariably entirely "Hijazi," of course, for the requisite
cloth was often imported from Yemen or Egypt. Perpetuating a tradition that
dated to pre-Islamic times, the Makkan historian al-Fasi relates that whereas
Muhammad covered the Ka`bah with "al-thiyab al-Yamaniyah,"
his early successors had dressed it with cloth made of Egyptian "Coptic"
linen.[101]

Nonetheless, local decorative and inlay workmanship often appears to have been
intricate. Certain sources claim that it was the third caliph, `Uthman b. `Affan,
who introduced brocaded ornamental embellishments to the kiswah, a practice
that appears to have grown increasingly more elaborate with the passage of time.
Though it was not until the onset of the eighth/fourteenth century, according
to a much later chronicler, al-Fasi, that Qur'anic inscriptions first appeared,
the sources nonetheless make clear that the Prophet and his caliphal successors
were committed to quality workmanship and spared no expense in the manufacture
of the kiswah, a phenomenon that has been perpetuated to the present
day.[102]

By relative cost analogy, even with modern automated technologies, the most
recent kiswahs - black, five-piece silk curtains covering 658 square
meters - have required for production each year the Saudi Riyal equivalent of
more than U.S. $4.5 million and more than two hundred laborers. The heretofore
cited 100-dinar gowns and 1,000-dirham thiyab said to have been worn
by contemporaries of Muhammad - not to mention the Prophet's grandfather's burial
gown, which reportedly was gilded with 1,000 mithqals of gold - must
also have been distinguished by their fineness to have commanded such imposing
prices.[103] The latter story, however, may border
on the apocryphal, since the gold weight alone in this burial gown would have
exceeded three kilograms.

(v) Perfumes. Perfumes likewise were
in high demand in contemporary West Arabian commercial markets, causing al-Bukhari
to title a significant section of his assembled traditions "A Chapter on
Buying Perfumes and Musk."[104] The Hijaz, and
al-Ta'if in particular, were known both for the production of fragrances and
their subsequent wholesale and retail distribution, a portion of which would
be dispatched annually to Makkah to perfume the Ka`bah.[105]
Abu Jahl's mother is said to have sold perfumes in Makkah, as did `Abd Allah
b. Kathir.[106] Al-Isfahani states that during one
pilgrimage season, `Umar b. Abi Rabi`ah purchased perfumes and cloth at the
Makkan market valued at a thousand dinars; and adds that he often procured such
goods from the Yemen as well.[107] Al-Tabari asserts
that `Abbas b. `Abd al-Muttalib also dealt in Yemeni perfumes,[108]
whereas al-Kindi testifies that `Amr b. al-`As sold perfumes (as well as leather
goods) in Egypt;[109] and al-Isfahani claims that Hakam
b. Abi al-`As sold them to the Lakhmids in al-Hirah.[110]

Ibn Qutaybah indicates that in addition to being a major grain broker, Abu
Talib was a perfume merchant dealing in a kind called `itr.[111]
The compiler of prophetic traditions, Muslim, describes the operations of a
first/seventh-century Qurashi merchant in al-Madinah who traded in a perfume-yielding
plant called idhkir.[112] Al-Baladhuri, in turn,
relates that there were over four hundred perfumers at this time in al-Madinah
alone, and that they participated with Prophet Muhammad in the defense of the
city while it was under siege by Umayyad forces.[113]

In sum, the industrial economy of the Hijaz at the rise of Islam was not as
primitive as it has been portrayed. Indeed, wealth generated from precious metals
made productive investment possible in a very diversified industrial base, enabling
local entrepreneurs to pursue a wide variety of economic ventures. The early
Makkans did possess commodities to consume and export, and trade in them they
did, producing those complex bilateral trade patterns that seem to have mystified
Crone. Let us now turn to a review of her most perplexing trade concerns.

Unraveling the "Coals To Newcastle"
Enigma

1. The Role of Multi-Directional Trade in Forging
the Medieval Hijazi Economic Dynamic. Recent scholarly analysis has
focused extensively upon the countertrade dimension in early medieval Hijazi
commerce; and with apparent reason, as it was not inconsequential. The diversified
economic base of early Makkah and its environs constituted a significant consumption
center, both from the standpoints of production inputs and consumer purchases,
as well as serving as a crucial nexus for transit trade. The division of labor
documented in the Arabic sources suggest that local merchants and entrepreneurs
met both their business and personal consumption requirements through acquisitions
from others. Wholesale purchases to meet the physical needs of pilgrims and
other participants in the seasonal trade fairs in the form of foodstuffs, tent
housing, and other accommodations lent further impetus to regional market demand.
At the same time, the reported wealth of local businessmen suggests that Makkah's
citizens possessed sufficient resources to make such acquisitions.

The sources thus make clear that the legend of an expansive early medieval
Hijazi trade was by no means a myth. It was, instead, the story of a dynamic,
diverse, integrated economy comprised not just of merchants and financiers but
of miners, farmers, jewelers, black-smiths, tanners, tailors, and other producers;
in short, people who had commodities to trade, to export as well as to import.
In the species of free market economics then at work in the Hijaz, we observe
the truism that "trade follows demand," producing quite natural bilateral
commercial flows.

Yet Crone, among others, wrestles with what she calls the "carrying coals
to Newcastle" trade phenomenon. Why would a region export products from
a specific commodity category - be it clothing, leather goods, or foodstuffs - to
a particular area, and then import products from the same category back again?
From the standpoint of economic theory, the answer is simple. Demand, quality,
taste, preference, and price differentials play highly significant roles in
creating particular commercial patterns. It often is the case that one region
manufactures a lesser quality product that meets lower or middle-class needs,
while another makes more pricey, sophisticated products of the same generic
type, and that these goods are then exchanged between them. That is why one
finds today a particular industrial district of Germany manufacturing Volkswagens,
"people's vehicles," while another produces the more expensive Mercedes.

It is a timeless axiom of macroeconomics that the only way net wealth is generated
in any jurisdiction is through the sometimes quite complex combination of external
exports and reverse investments. Foreign trade has historically been prerequisite
to both processes, since selling only to those within the same jurisdiction
is economically no more than a zero-sum game; as it is an inescapable commercial
reality that if you are to produce significant wealth through industrial production,
then you must export the products that you make. This fact has been recognized
in all civilizations, and the early medieval Hijazis were clearly no exception.

Thus it is that the Qur'an speaks of annual trading caravans to Yemen and Syria;
and the early sources find Hashim, the ostensible Qurashi founder of Makkan
international trade, in southern Syria selling leather goods and cloth, indeed
setting up an entire Qurashi trading community there. Thus it is that we also
find Abu Sufyan and `Abd al-Rahman b. `Awf often in Syria selling leather, cottage
cheese, and clarified butter; the Prophet himself journeying to Busra with his
uncle Abu Talib to promote the sale of diverse products including, through a
mudarabah trade contract, the merchandise of his future wife Khadijah;
the military commander `Amr b. al-`As in Egypt selling perfumes and leather;
Hakam b. Abi al-`As in al-Hirah selling perfumes; `Uthman b. al-Huwayrith contracting
to sell clarified butter to Byzantine Syria; and Abu Sufyan in Iraq, `Uthman
b. `Affan and Sa`id b. al-`As in Syria, `Abbas b. `Abd al-Muttalib, Abu Rabi`ah,
and Walid b. al-Mughirah in Yemen, and `Amr b. al-`As and Umarah b. Walid al-Makhzumi
in Abyssinia on similar trading expeditions.[114]

For they were on a common mission: promoting familiar products, all of which
were manufactured in their home base, the Hijaz, at the rise of Islam. One need
not be baffled by their activities. Nor is it illogical that contemporary Hijazis,
like other manufacturers, should want to export the commodities that they produced.
This is homo economicus at work - creating trade patterns dictated by
the quest for net wealth generation, as shaped by market demand, unit price,
and consumer preference.

2. The Role of the Pilgrimage in Shaping Makkan
Trade. As we have seen, the nature and content of the Makkah region's
sixth and seventh-century export flows can be rationally explained by evaluating
the full spectrum of commodities indigenously produced. The same is true for
imports. For it is not improbable that, because of other, equally cogent economic
factors, the early Makkans should have wanted to procure products within commodity
categories similar to those they exported. Indeed, given a sizable, albeit fluctuating,
consumer base that possessed a nucleus of self-sustaining productive industries
but a paucity of various specific natural resources, what they imported may
be as economically significant as what they exported.

Accordingly, one finds reports of Hashim importing wheat from Syria; of Syrians
bringing grains and oils to Makkah in the Prophet's era; of Makkans also bringing
oils from Syria by camel caravan (al-zayt al-rikabi, an early version
of the "mobile oil corporation"); of wheat being brought in from Hawran
and al-Balqa'; of `Abd al-Rahman b. 'Awf employing seven hundred camels to import
grains and flour back from Syria after having delivered other agricultural commodities
there; of `Abd Allah b. Jud`an bringing two thousand camel loads of honey, wheat,
and clarified butter, and Talhah b. `Ubayd Allah carrying quantities of cloth
back from the Levant as well; of `Abd Allah b. Abi Rabi`ah selling Yemeni perfumes
in al-Madinah; of Safwan b. Umayyah, according to both al-Azraqi and al-Fakihi,
running a market facility in lower Makkah wherein he stored goods that he imported
from Egypt; and sundry other reports documenting Hijazi imports of various armaments,
food products, clothin g, textiles, and perfumes from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and
Abyssinia - commodities similar to those that they also made and exported to
those countries.[114]

What was the dynamic? Again, nothing more than demand, price, and preference - the
basic functioning of free market economics - at work in the early Makkan economy.
This is why the Makkans delivered clothing and foodstuffs to Syria and also
brought back their Syrian commodity equivalents. This is also why Michigan,
which has its own dairy herds, imports cheeses from a sister state, Wisconsin,
just as successful Western businessmen today often prefer Hong Kong tailored
suits to local fashions.

Crone is aware of the bilateral trade activities cited above. Many, if not
most, of them, are mentioned in her book. Yet she remains troubled by the "common
commodities" dimension to bilateral trade, based on a few transactions
documented in anecdotal source evidence, while missing the true significance
of the total trade picture. "It makes no sense," she laments.[116]
But it does.

The annual Hajj has historically generated dramatic seasonal shifts
in local populace levels; and with them, concomitant changes in consumer demand.
In the off-season in early Makkah, the regional economic base probably was adequate
to meet proximate consumption needs and even to permit some exporting, thereby
creating rational, market-driven economies of scale. But during the rapid upswing
in numbers of consumers in the sacred months of pilgrimage, more voluminous
imports of transport animals, foodstuffs, clothing, and other consumer goods
doubtless were required - commodity needs that, in slacker times, would be met
through local production. To meet these seasonal requirements, then, the Makkans
had to import consumer goods in substantial wholesale volume.

There were other concurrent cogent commercial and economic factors actively
at work in the early medieval Makkan marketplace as well. For example, basic
production economics would dictate that annual manufacturing infrastructure
capacity not be substantially expanded for just three months of increased consumption,
particularly for perishable goods that could not be stockpiled in this pre-refrigeration
age. Also, transportation economics would dictate that Hijazi merchant camel
caravans not return from their destinations emptyhanded. Only with additional
wholesale acquisition risk could they effectively compete, at retail, with the
incoming foreign pilgrim-merchants with their own home-based goods - a practice
readily viable within the essentially laissez faire economy that characterized
the contemporary Hijaz.[117] Moreover, in this tight
merchandise demand market, selling to foreign pilgrims products from their own
homelands with which they were acquainted would doubtless have been more marketable
than the promotion of less familiar, and perhaps lesser quality, Hijazi goods.
Finally, the seasonal trade fairs likewise allowed for "product diversity"
- offering an ideal venue for the exchange of a broad range of merchandise,
distinguished by price and quality differentials, obtained from a wide range
of sources. They were a commercial midpoint for merchants of many nationalities.
A Yemeni pilgrim wholesale peddlar might be seeking a line of Syrian thiyab,
but not Hijazi counterparts. Hijazi merchants, prudently attuned to market demand
and profit motive, therefore, would have a ready selection of them in their
inventories. Thus it is that al-Marzuqi states of "Suq `Uqaz":
"There were in `Uqaz things that were not in any other Arab market.
A Yemeni king would send a good sword and the finest cloths, and holding these
up in `Uqaz, would say: 'Let the noblest of Arabs take these.'"[118]

At the same time, a better understanding of the commercial role of key players
in early Makkan trade likewise contributes to comprehending its structure and
direction. For just as numerous Qurashis were individually involved in trade
at the rise of Islam, so its "blueblood" banu Hashim clan was collectively
involved in the regional promotion, regulation, and administration of trade.
Indeed, their "Dar al-Nadwah," generally functioned economically
not unlike a modern "chamber of commerce," having major trade contracts
drawn up within its confines. Major trading caravans are said to have started
out from its doorstep, and it was to there that they returned.[119]

Such developments were not without precedent, of course. Indeed, it would be
surprising were it otherwise. For the banu Hashim, within the Hijazi tribal
matrix, historically functioned as "first among equals" - charged
with such functions of public religious administration as the sidanah
(custodianship of the Ka`bah), hijabah (opening and closing of the Ka`bah
to visitors), sifarah (negotiating inter-tribal affairs), rifadah
(providing pilgrims with sustenance), and "siqayah" (providing
pilgrims with water). Ibn Habib indicates that full-scale commercial caravans
as well as individual pilgrims would be provided with such services.[120]

Many of these responsibilities, such as the rifadah, were significant
commercial functions in their own right, involving substantial logistical coordination.
Al-Muqaddasi states, for instance, that when Caliph `Umar b. al-Khattab ordered
rebuilt an erstwhile Roman canal, across Egypt north of al-Fustat, that connected
the Nile with the Red Sea, thereby enabling Egyptian merchant ships bearing
corn, grains, and other produce to sail directly to ports situated on the western
coastline of the Arabian peninsula, no less than three thousand camel loads
of corn were exported from Egypt to the Hijaz in a single season to meet the
needs of pilgrims.[121]

In short, the market functioning of the early medieval Hijaz was no more than
the dynamic of fundamental free-market economics operating in an early medieval
Mideast commercial setting. Hijazi market demand fluctuated by season, creating
certain infrastructural imbalances and, with them, demand shifts in both import
and export requirements. It was precisely this dynamic that produces the quite
natural "coals to Newcastle" bilateral trade patterns. For Newcastle
imports coals perforce when it cannot readily meet local demand.

Conclusions

Crone ends her compelling treatment of early Makkan trade by concluding modestly:
"This is a book in which little has been learnt and much unlearnt."[122]
Yet in debunking the notion of early Christian era trans-Arabian trade patterns
perpetuating well into the sixth and seventh centuries, she, like Serjeant,
Simon, Ibrahim, Peters, and others, has made a considerable contribution to
the study of early Islamic commercial historiography. For her analysis downplaying
the significance of contemporary transit trade has permitted a refocusing on
other critical facets of the medieval Hijazi industrial base that were far more
economically significant - among them, indigenously generated import and export
trade derived from agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Indeed, such a focus,
tying the testimony of the chronicled sources to tangible physical evidence,
clearly supports the contention that the region did produce many of those commodity
exports that have been the source of recent scholarly concern.

Likewise, a better understanding of the commodity demand requirements of the
Hajj unravels the various bilateral trade dilemmas that Crone poses,
indicating that substantial imports likely were required to meet the incoming
pilgrims' needs, whereas in the pilgrimage off-season, certain exports in similar
commodities were possible. This was a simple case of economic rationalization,
a delicate industrial and commercial fine-tuning invoking those ever-present,
market-driven economies of scale that shape all trade patterns. In this instance,
the local production infrastructure appears to have possessed the capacity to
generate exportable commodities beyond routine local needs, but doubtless lacked
the ability to meet the massive volume of inbound Hajji "consumer
demands" entirely from internal resources.

Accordingly, the present inquiry has developed complementary evidence presented
by written sources, supported by the residual physical artifacts, that incontestably
indicates that sixth to seventh-century Makkah was far more than a mere transit
stop on the classic trans-Arabian spice route of antiquity. Because of the prevalence
of gold and silver, the indigenous macroeconomy was both vibrant and productive.
Precious metals underwrote investments in expanding industries that produced
exportable commodities. They also served as production inputs for key manufacturing
industries; and what emerged was a wealthy, burgeoning economy with its own
basic export mandates and import needs. The early Makkan trade claims of the
medieval Arab chronicles thus are not incomprehensible nor are they even particularly
contradictory when examined under the scope of modern economic theory.

This is a reconciliatory, somewhat revisionist interpretation. It is sustained
by both textual and extant tangible evidence, and enjoys the additional merit
of allowing closure on a more positive note than has often characterized the
early Makkan trade debate. Now, on at least four issues, most scholars of the
region's early economic history should concur: (i) that as economic resources,
the medieval Arabic sources must be treated as the fragmentary, anecdotal accounts
that they are, not historical fiction, but also not detailed statistical abstracts;
(ii) that they document a quite significant import-export trade in high-volume,
lower unit-value goods of the types then being produced in the Hijaz; (iii)
that their noteworthy silence on perpetuation of the Near Eastern trade patterns
that obtained in the second Christian century is probably significant; and finally
(iv) that the significance may lie in the reality that a sixth to seventh-century
trade in "spices, silks, frankincense, and myrrh of Arabi" is likely
no more than a modern orientalist myth.

For the reality is that the Arabic sources did not make such extravagant claims - modern
scholars merely presumed that they had - and the great contribution of Crone,
Serjeant, Peters, Simon, Ibrahim, and others has been to prove a critical non-sequitur
to be precisely what it was. As such, and in this context, their historiographic
trade concerns might more precisely be addressed to Montgomery Watt (and before
him, Henri Lammens) than to Muhammad al-Waqidi.

In sum, the early medieval Arabs had at their disposal both the resource base
and the business tools needed to achieve what the Islamic sources claim they
did. Whatever the strengths or weaknesses of any particular source, moreover,
the data, when taken in aggregate, converge in a compelling way to indicate
that early medieval West Arabia enjoyed the presence of a substantially productive
economic base and an attendant, equally significant multi-directional trade
in the commodities produced. The net result, then, is not a commercial illusion
produced by hagiographic lore. It is, instead, a rational data-composite effectively
defining a complete and fully integrated free-market macroeconomy.

6. Watt, Muhammad at Makkah, 3; idem, "Makkah
as the Springboard for the Call of Islam," in Studies
in the History of Arabia: Arabia in the Age of the Prophet and the Four Caliphs
(Riyadh: King Saud Univ., 1989), vol. 3, pt. 1, p. 23.

14. Ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar, ed. I. Lichtenstadter
(Hyderabad: Da'iat al-Ma`arif al-`Uthmaniyah, 1942), 171; Crone, Meccan
Trade, 151. Again, note the parallels to Henri Pirenne, Muhammad
and Charlemagne (London: Unwin University Books, 1974), 174, who states:
"It is a proven fact that the Musulman traders did not install themselves
beyond the frontiers of Islam. If they did trade, they did so among themselves."

15. Watt, Muhammad at Makkah, 33.

16. Crone, Meccan Trade, 199.

17. Such an approach can likewise be rationally supported in assessing the
historic evolution of the Near East's sixth century A.D. For the economies of
the early medieval Red Sea littoral and southern Mediterranean Basin were neither
"static" systems, nor did they evolve in isolation, but instead were
profoundly impacted by powerful synergies between them. Accordingly, while the
unilateral imposition of modern economic theory upon early medieval economic
models can admittedly normally be a somewhat risky proposition, in this case
it can be justified - as the evolution of capitalistic institutions - such as
the metamorphosis of the Islamic mudarabah and mukhatarah commercial
and industrial investment contracts into the Italian commenda and "mohatra,"
as well as other analogous business institutions and much medieval western commercial
vocabulary - including carat (qirat), douane (diwan, customs office),
magazines (makhazin, meaning "magazines" or "stores"),
and tariff (ta`rifah) - derived from early Arabic antecedents. It can
be effectively demonstrated, in fact, that no small measure of early Western
capitalistic practice - built by Muslim jurists to reconcile the Islamic ban
on interest-bearing transactions (riba) to contemporary commercial exigencies
- was subsequently transmitted to the West in the 9th to 11th centuries by Italian
merchants to directly circumvent the Holy Roman Empire's parallel ban on "usury"
during Europe's Dark Ages. Thus, in comparing the two "capitalistic models,"
the analogy is not to one of "kind," but rather of in-kind "degree."

35. See G. Heck, "Gold Mining in Arabia and
the Rise of the Islamic State," JESHO
42 (1999): 363ff. It is critical to bear in mind, however, that while this analysis
focuses upon the Hijaz and West Central Najd, there likewise are contemporary
reports of medieval mining in what is now modern Yemen, Oman, and elsewhere
on the Arabian Peninsula.

44. Al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, ed. R. Radwan
(Beirut: Dar Maktabat al-Hilal, 1978), 452. Al-Baladhuri states that while in
the pre-Islamic era, Byzantine dinars and Persian dirhams did reach the markets
of Makkah, the indigenous people traded only with one another using metals bullion:
la yatabayi`un ila`ala innahatibr.

48. Indeed, indicative of the provenance of early Makkan gold, in a slightly
later era, currency minting operations also may have taken place using the ore
yields of these sites - as there are numerous early Islamic coins whose metal
content is directly linked to bullion mined in western Arabia. An Umayyad dinar
dating to the year 105/724, for instance, includes the phrase "mine of
the Commander of the Faithful in the Hijaz." Numerous copper fulus
have likewise been found that bear similar inscriptions. On these developments,
see Miles, "Some Early Arab Dinars,"
102; Casanova, "Une mine d'or"; Shamma,
"Al-Madinah," 106-9; S. al-Rashid. Darb
Zubaydah, 128; Arab News (Jiddah, July 23, 1990), 2.

54. See al-Maqrizi, Shudhur al-`Uqud, 4-6. Scholars often refer to this period
of "commerce sans guerre" as a "Pax Makkanah" or the era
of the "Makkan commonwealth" - a consolidated economic regime that
underwrote significant region-wide trade flows, as evidenced by the abundance
of Byzantine gold dinars and Sasanid silver dirhams then reportedly flowing
through contemporary Hijazi markets.

63. It must be noted that some medieval Muslim jurists were of the opinion
that its use in manufacturing ventures was forbidden. Maliki and Shafi'i scholars,
in particular, rejected a "productive investment" application of the
"mudarabah," arguing that since the agent would be engaging
in actual production, traditionally compensated by a fixed wage rate, all profit
and loss should accrue exclusively to the investor. The Hanafi jurist al-Sarakhsi
(Kitab al-Mabsut [Cairo: Matba`at al-Sa`adah,
1906/1986], 22: 54), however, believed that there were ways for producers to
circumvent this prohibition merely by engaging in the sale, as well as in the
manufacture, of the goods: "If the investor instructs his agent to employ
his capital to purchase leather and hides - and then design them into boots,
buckles, and leather bags - this is all part of the practice of merchants in
their pursuit of profit, and is permissible in a mudarabah contract."
Hence, in this interpretation, the mudarabah could, in fact, be legally
employed in production operations - but only if the producer of the commodity
was also its distributor.

88. Qur'an, 57:25; also 18:96: "Bring me blocks of iron. At length, when
he had filled up the space between the two steep mountainsides, he said: 'blow
(with your bellows).' Then, when he had made it red as fire, he said: 'bring
it to me, that I might pour over it molten lead.'"

117. This is a point made by F. Donner, "Mecca's
Food Supply and Muhammad's Boycott," JESHO
20 (1977): 254: "... for the caravans that went north bearing spices, ivory,
and gold could easily have returned carrying loads of cereals, dried fruits,
and oils, which were plentiful and inexpensive in Syria."